education startups

A Montreal startup that wants to teach children about electronics is seeing strong success on Kickstarter, reaching its $25,000 goal on the second day of its crowdfunding campaign. MakerBloks are colourful blocks that allow children to create real electric circuits. A Kickstarter campaign to fund their creation launched on Tuesday morning, raising over $20,000 within 24-hours and reaching its goal on Wednesday afternoon. Francois Poirier, the CEO and creator of MakerBloks says he got the idea while working as a product designer. Clients would come to him with little more than a circuit board and his job was to make the products look good and be easy to use, but he says, “I actually had no idea what they had in their hand, the [printed circuit board] itself was a mystery to me.” Poirier says his then-seven-year-old niece was developing a strong interest in science and technology at the same time so he thought it would be fun for the two of them to learn about electronics together.

“I looked at all the different ways to do it, software, books, DVDs and toys,” he says, but nothing fit.When it comes to toys, he says, “they are all bad, they are all using outdated technology.”He says the toys on the market might make sense to engineers but they don’t make sense to a six-year-old. Having worked as a consultant for Mega Brands, he thought about creating an educational tool that involved bright plastic blocks.

One of the MakerBloks kits being launched as part of the Kickstarter campaign also includes a augmented reality feature – a mirror that attaches to an iPad’s camera and allows children to solve puzzles in a virtual game using their real-world blocks. It’s another thing that Poirier says sets MakerBloks apart from other electronics kits on the market. “They don’t use what the kids are using,” he says. “I thought it was important to adapt to the kids of today.” Still, Poirier says MakerBloks won’t be going entirely virtual. “For me it’s really important to always have the hardware piece, the blocks,” he says. “Because if they are more interested in electronics when they are 10, 12-years-old and they actually want to pick up a soldering iron and build real circuits, it’s always going to be a physical world.” As part of the Kickstarter campaign, MakerBloks is offering several different kits as individual perks, that will help guide future developments from the company. “I think the Kickstarter campaign will actually give us a really good idea of what our audience wants,” Poirier says. That’s a big part of why he decided to launch his product through a crowdfunding campaign. “Gaining visibility and validating the product is the major reason we’re doing the Kickstarter, for sure the funding will help but it’s not the main goal,” he says. “Dollars are the best feedback you can get.” While delivering the MakerBloks on time and living up to the promises made in the Kickstarter campaign is Poirier’s main goal right now, he’s also got his eye on the future. He wants MakerBloks to be the flagship product of a company that’s focused on science, technology, engineering and math learning for kids.

Come join the party! The Baltimore EdSurge Tech for Schools Summit aims to ensure that educator voices are heard by the innovators building educational tools for schools. Educators also want to discover and play with cutting edge tools.

“This will be the first time that companies, teachers, and districts will be in the same space to talk about how we can make purposeful decisions about what the best edtech companies have to offer our instruction and learning for our kids,” says Jenna Shaw, middle school teacher at Patterson Park Public Charter School in Baltimore City.

“We can be hands-on, ask the questions that really matter, and make decisions around innovative instruction and curriculum development,” she adds. “These conversations often happen in silos, and the Summit allows a space for everyone dedicated to making education better to dream big about the future.”

Ellen Craviotto, an elementary teacher from Peabody Charter School, traveled from Santa Barbara to Mountain View to participate in a similar EdSurge Summit in Mountain View last November. “I have been teaching for 24 years and it was the first conference I have gone to that I really felt the spirit of collaboration between the companies and the teachers.”

Dame cinco!!! Why you ask? Because Startup Weekend Education just had its most successful month to-date, conducting five different events in three brand new cities around the world in a 30-day time period! Spanning three continents, incredible local Community Organizers lead the charge, orchestrating events for over 700 people to come together and build great solutions to some of education’s biggest problems! Check out all the winner’s below, and be sure to visit the event pages, as well, where awesome Organizers and volunteers blogged about the events.

Johannesburg, Ann Arbor, Prishtina, Ibague, DC, Montreal, and Rochester events are also coming in 2014. Sign up to the Startup Weekend Education newsletter to receive notifications for when tickets go on sale!